


Breach

by themantlingdark



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:35:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21503818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: For the following prompts:"A cosy night outside stargazing and watching the Northern lights while drowning in blankets and sharing confessions?" (impalaforthree)and (more loosely)"In the spirit of entire months being swallowed up in the holiday blitz, maybe a November Thanksgiving gathering (either trying to hide it from the family, or meeting each other's families for the first time?)" (boltplumart)
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Kudos: 149





	Breach

  
  
  
  
  


Cloud-spotting was as close as they came to religion. Any time talking it out or trying to shake the stress from their skin with exercise failed, they turned to the sky. The clouds were soft, most often silent, and always mercifully indifferent. In a world so often hostile, it felt like kindness in comparison. They rolled over everything and everyone without a care. They knew nothing of guns, gods, or countries and lived as lawless shape-shifters, immune even to gravity. For Thor and Loki, clouds were the untroubled embodiment of inescapable change. Each form that arose within their whorls was erased seconds later. To watch them with focus meant that one association after another was caught and quickly released so that the next could be grasped.

The size of the Earth was incomprehensible from any position on its surface, but clouds operated on a planetary scale, and to watch them swim effortlessly over the horizon miles away jolted Thor and Loki into awareness of their own scale--or near-lack-thereof. The two were small and meaningless beneath the heavens, and the same could be said of their problems.

Fall, with its ever-shortening days, cut into their cloud-spotting. It chipped away at their peace of mind in the process. 

In another world they would have loved autumn unreservedly. The scale, range, and intensity of color put all the other seasons to shame. The drooping whimper of daylilies wouldn’t even register beneath a wall of maples screaming orange in mid October. Summer’s flowers whispered and wilted in their low, muddy beds, buzzed by mosquitoes and menaced by rabbits. Trees, on the other hand, waved with comfortable recklessness in the gale as their leaves rained red onto the ground, snuffing out green. Witch-fingered branches cradled the bulky jumbles of squirrels' nests with ease while late fruit fed flocks of birds flying south. When the sun filtered through the leaves it set whole forests glowing like cities of stained glass. 

It was the looming threat of November that left the brothers nervous and stole the sense of bounty from the harvest season. The time change that so sweetly granted an extra hour of sleep stole an hour of light every evening after. It left less time to watch the clouds and see the trees. None at all, in fact, on weekdays after work was done. Sometimes the entire weekend was dedicated to cloud-spotting and leaf-peeping on the calendar, but the weather rarely cooperated. While the misty variations of grey within a nimbostratus cloud were subtly, mournfully beautiful, they also brought rain and snow, which made them no pleasure to lie under with temperatures already low. 

November also marked the beginning of the holidays. A tricky time for anyone, but a field laid with landmines for Thor and Loki.

By November tenth, Loki was wearing his hair back in tight ponytails all day to prevent the mindless tugging and twisting he dealt the strands when he was stressed. By the fifteenth, he’d gone to the salon and come back with smooth cuticles and nails done in emerald shellac to keep himself from biting them. 

Thor noticed the mileage on their evening runs creeping up, but the increase in conversation that normally accompanied it hadn’t followed. Increasing their caloric intake was the only gain he could make with Loki’s mouth. Dinners expanded from three to five or more courses, which didn’t include dessert. 

Odin, in the act that finally cemented for the brothers that their father did, in fact, possess some sense, was taking their mother to a spa. For three days before Thanksgiving and three days after, she’d have every soak, scrub, peel, mask, massage, meal, nap, sauna, and swim her heart desired. He’d booked a year ago, after his mother-in-law’s behaviour over Thanksgiving weekend had left Frigga furious for a month, at which point she’d had to endure another long weekend with her mother for Christmas. 

Frigga usually handled dessert for the holiday meal, but the spa trip meant there would be no time or place for baking. Thor volunteered to do it this year, in addition to the bread he usually baked, and was test driving pumpkin pie recipes, each one richer than the last. The one that had just come out of the oven an hour ago used cream and brown sugar in place of evaporated milk and white. Loki, halfway through his third slice, was eyeing the pan again already, visibly weighing a fourth. Thor mentally declared this variation the winner.

“Fuck,” Loki moaned, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his belly. His plate was empty but he was too full for more. The fourth slice of pie sat gloating at him. He silently vowed to have it for breakfast.

“I’ll be making this recipe for the real deal,” Thor said.

“I’ll be eating it in the car en route.”

“Then I’ll be baking four.”

“Well, at least one should survive. Probably. No promises though.” Loki sighed and let his head fall back, which set his Adam’s apple jutting out at an angle that always unnerved Thor. “I cannot fucking believe it’s almost Thanksgiving.”

“I know,” Thor groaned. “October lasted twenty minutes.”

“Seriously. The whole month just vanished. Now we’re at the asshole-end of a shitshow of a year, and I was already running on fumes.”

“Same. Since 2016 at least,” Thor agreed.

Things had seemed bad before, but they’d been worse than they’d let on. Thor and Loki lived in a country more than half full of fascists. It was not their imagination: birds, bees, parks, and native plants were always fewer and farther between. Fossil-fueled machines were always more. Facts were far out of fashion. The Earth was violently ill. And that was only the tip of a very tall iceberg.

Nearly all escape, however brief, was blocked. Many of those who might have been allies were so hell-bent on morally and intellectually one-upping each other that any semblance of community had shattered. Safety could not be found in numbers. Most conversation was attack masquerading as critique. People who’d thought long and hard about feminism had come to the impossible conclusion that it could be exclusionary. Not that Thor and Loki had ever harbored hope that they’d be included. But they worried about the generation growing up in the poisonous shifting sands that composed the current landscape.

Fiction seemed like it should be safe, which made it all the worse when it wasn’t. Awkward, aimless interactions between bland, bloodless actors were hailed as peak romance. When the camera had panned out the window during a sex scene between two men, Thor and Loki had walked out of the theater mid-movie for the first time in their lives. A television series touted as spectacularly queer gave its young straight pairing an undeniably sexual relationship--and an interminable, excruciatingly unfunny sex scene intended as comedy. Its queer hero-couple was handled chastely, providing plausible deniability. The other queer characters were overwhelmingly villains. The creator publicly patted himself on the back for his inclusiveness and romanticism, taking credit for work that had been accomplished by the actors in spite of the material they’d been given. 

Thor and Loki were not fooled. 

Nor were they comforted.

“Would you be willing to stay up late tonight?” Thor asked.

“What’s tomorrow?” Loki wondered, face blank as he failed to remember. Doing freelance work from home had divorced him from the calendar.

“Sunday.”

“All right,” Loki said, narrowing his eyes at his brother and getting only a crisp, grinning nod in reply before Thor rushed from the room. “Wait, how late? And to do what?” Loki called.

“Not sure,” Thor hollered, “and you’ll see. No takesies backsies.”

“Shit,” Loki huffed. Only the fourth slice of pie was there to hear it. Thor had already made it up to the attic.

  
  
  


All Loki knew was that they were heading north in Thor’s ancient pick-up truck with a great deal of their camping equipment, but not the tent itself. The other cars on the road were travelling south towards the city for a Saturday night spent wining, dining, dancing, and seducing. 

After an hour, all the roads were dirt and the streetlights, when there were any, were only at intersections.

“Are you entering a goth phase?” Loki asked, when Thor parked beside the low stone wall of an old cemetery.

“It’s not a phase,” Thor smiled. 

Thor had packed extra layers: hats, mittens, sweaters, scarves, a queen sleeping bag, a quilt, and enormous socks. They got the air mattress inflated with the cord plugged into the cigarette lighter--a relic Loki would miss when this car gasped its last--and slotted it neatly into the bed of the truck. From their perch on the open tailgate they sat untying their boots and tugging on the second pairs of socks. Then they shuffled into the sleeping bag together, pulled the quilt up to their chins, and settled on their backs.

“Oh my god,” Loki breathed. 

Clouds, when present, provided obvious cover, but, even in their absence, the pale blue sky of day, with its illusion of opacity, felt sheltering. On clear, dark nights like this, far from light pollution, the sky was wide open. The only sign of weather was the wind that had come all the way from the sun. It resembled nothing so much as a gateway opened by some amalgam of an astrophysicist and a sorcerer. Flowing walls of green light rose to towering red peaks and wrought a breach between the Earth and heavens. Forms and colors found in nebulae echoed the farthest reaches of space and seemed to draw them down within reach. Stars flickered between the shifting bands of the aurora as if drifting closer, further blurring their usual impression of distance. 

For three hours the brothers lay gaping with the whole world gone blank at their backs.

“I need to pee,” Loki sighed.

“Same,” Thor said. They bounced and shuffled from their cozy cocoon, then stood on the tailgate and groaned as they sent twin streams of piss down onto the frosted grass. “Cocoa?” Thor asked afterward, offering a thermos.

“Please.”

It was lukewarm, overly sweet, and entirely welcome. The thick clots of half-melted marshmallows were a slimy, childish treat, and the sugar provided a much needed jolt of energy after so much of the stuff had been unconsciously expended in the fight against the cold.

“What would you like to do?” Thor asked.

“They’re still going,” Loki said, looking back up at the lights, letting his mouth hang open. The puffs of breath that passed his lips looked like flashes of Milky Way against the sky.

When they were back in the sleeping bag, Loki fidgeted out of his right mitten and tugged off Thor’s left so they could lace their fingers together.

The silhouetted peaks of pines made black stalagmites that looked to have formed as the northern lights dripped, dimming as they dried. Great horned owls began calling to each other from a stand of oaks, their song so familiar from movies it now felt false. The brothers pictured the little pellets they had often found along the edges of their favorite childhood path.

“On a scale from one to ten, how appealing do you find the thought of dissolving into a small pile of hair, teeth, and bones on a forest floor?” Loki asked.

“About thirty,” Thor admitted. 

Loki laughed and said, “Same,” then leaned over to kiss Thor’s cheek, finding it firm with a smile and warm compared to his own lips, but cool compared to Thor’s norm.

“You’re getting cold,” Loki said.

“I know. Just not in a hurry to get back to it all.” 

Loki nodded and kissed him again. Neither made any move to leave. The lights were still shimmering above, waving like banners, and the sky was dark to the east.

Loki stared up until the Earth faded away again. He barely blinked for two hours. Then his muscles slowly clenched and he began to shiver.

“I need to tell her,” Loki breathed.

“Ok,” Thor said softly, and squeezed his brother’s hand.

“We need someone who understands.”

“We do.”

“And I can’t keep hiding myself from her.”

“I know,” Thor soothed.

“I’m ready.”

“I’m glad.”

Loki had made this exact announcement the last three autumns as well. Each time, Thor’s response had been the same, and, each time, Loki’s intention to confess had come to nothing, leaving the unmet need to gnaw at him for another year.

  
  
  


Apart from the initial chattering of teeth while the engine warmed up, they were quiet on the drive back. Once home, they each wanted to enjoy the whole tank’s worth of hot water, so they took a rare shower together, hugging beneath the spray and resting their heads on each other’s shoulders until the chill had been chased from their fingertips and their backs were red and pliant with the scalding.

Frosted adhesive film lined every window in their house. When asked, they said it was to save the birds, which it did, though it wasn’t. Separate bedrooms were maintained to deceive guests. The soft California king in the west bedroom was Thor’s in name and was where they slept. The queen bed in the east bedroom officially belonged to Loki. It bore a firmer mattress, better for bouncing, and sheets that fit more comfortably into the washing machine.

“Let’s cut off all our hair and just wear mermaid wigs,” Thor said, after they’d already spent half an hour side by side with their blow dryers.

“Yes,” Loki groaned. “Fuck this diffuser shit.”

Thor’s shorter, straighter hair let him be a bit more aggressive with air speed and heat. Loki’s curls were fickle, fragile, and demanding.

“Here,” Thor said, taking the dryer from Loki’s aching arms and finishing the job with more patience than Loki had possessed even at the beginning of the task.

“Would you believe it if I said I’m up for it?” Loki asked, leaning heavily against his brother’s chest after they’d brushed their teeth, getting a minty kiss on the tip of his nose.

“I would, but I know you’ve got spaghetti arms right now, and your legs aren’t much better, so-”

“You’ll be doing all the work.”

“Ah,” Thor nodded, then scooped his brother up and carried him to bed. 

Anyone who mistook speed and spontaneity for passion would, at best, be disappointed, or, at worst, injure their partner. When Thor and Loki were superficially excited, they ended up in each other’s mouths, typically on the couch. It was soft, wet, safe, most often a blur, and the mess was easily eaten. Unintentional napping tended to follow. It was horny and distracted, though playful and sweet, and meant to meet a very basic need with a minimum of difficulty.

They were thirty-six now. Old enough to know that love was work, and that the effort was what gave it strength and worth. If you didn’t feed it, it would starve. If it couldn’t bend, it would break. If you drove it away, it might not come back, and if it did it would be changed. It was like any breathing thing, which meant it was well matched with the body.

Passion had all of love’s requirements with the additional hurdles of striking a survivable balance between comfort and vulnerability, between familiar and strange, and between satisfaction and desire. 

Loki smiled while his brother set tissues, wipes, bottles, and towels at the bedside. Hummed when Thor turned up the heat. Moaned when Thor brought in the jar of cream that meant he was about to get a massage.

“I thought you might say that,” Thor grinned, then lightly gripped Loki’s toes, found them already growing cold, and paused to put a fluffy pair of socks on his feet.

Thor laid the towel down and Loki pushed the pillows aside and rolled onto it. 

This was the easy part: lying slack and quiet on his stomach with his eyes closed while Thor worked the muscles in his shoulders. It was purely relaxing to receive this pleasure. Warm, strong hands slid over his skin, dispelling knots and tension. Thor’s weight pressed him down into the bed so that the mattress stretched his breast.

Thor straddled Loki’s behind to do his back, but he knelt off to the sides to work his legs, not hastily spreading and squeezing them for his own fun, but continuing his task consistently, with all focus trained on Loki’s comfort. He did the shins and quads when Loki turned over. When the limbs were finished, things gained a degree of difficulty. 

The front of the body was fragile. The muscles of the breast were thin and couldn’t be pressed as firmly as those of the back. The muscles of the throat and belly, with helpless organs hidden behind them, could only be touched gently and with feedback about appropriate pressure. Loki had to tell his brother what to do, which was an admission of wanting it done. And if he wished to look at Thor’s body--or at his own--he had to be willing to get caught in the act.

Thor rubbed cream across Loki’s chest and gathered the pectoral muscles with the edges of his palms, pushing them up and off to the sides. He slotted his fingers into the troughs of Loki’s ribs and pressed smoothly along the grooves. Loki made a soft sound of pleasure at having the less traveled paths of his body brought to the fore. It was rare that anything could make him feel new. 

“Tickle?” Thor asked.

“No, but I thought it would... it’s nice.”

“More?”

"Yeah." 

Thor kept at, it shifting his fingers up a rib with each pass, tracing every bone he could reach.

Thor palmed Loki’s belly, soothing and warming the skin, then reached down behind Loki's waist to rake his fingers up over the flanks, lightly lifting the muscles without pressing them in towards the spine. He was sitting astride Loki’s legs and Loki could feel the fuzzy drag of Thor’s balls whenever Thor leaned forward, tickling the insides of his thighs.

When it was time to work the throat, Thor stretched out above his brother and slowly let his weight down, driving Loki into the mattress and warming him. He massaged Loki’s neck with his mouth, sucking the muscles rather than pressing them, stretching them with tugs from his lips.

“Mark me up,” Loki whispered. 

“Yeah?”

Loki nodded. “I’ll wear concealer if I have to go out before they’re gone.”

He felt Thor nod against his jaw. Felt their breasts press more tightly together as Thor drew a fast breath. Felt soft, full lips seal around him and take a long, sharp sip of his skin that stung where the blood was drawn close to the surface. Then a crescent of bright pressure bloomed around the spot as Thor bit it. 

Loki wanted it all to be wetter. Wanted to burst between Thor’s teeth. He wished for skin like milkweed that would send white beads of dew seeping from the edges of the bite. Dreamt of some safe, second blood that could rush over his brother’s tongue and stain his lips.

“You’re soaking my hip,” Thor said, reaching down beneath the head of Loki’s cock to catch the other drops that had gathered there. His fingertips were glistening when he brought them to his lips.

“Not enough,” Loki said. “I want…”

“Want what?” Thor breathed, and tipped his head to lick across Loki’s mouth.

“A flood.”

“Mm,” Thor nodded, then nipped his brother’s lips and licked them again, nudging them apart and pressing his tongue past his brother’s teeth where everything was hot, plush, and slick. Their mouths watered as they moved, and Loki had to gulp to keep from choking. He felt Thor’s cock drip onto his belly and he hummed. He’d swapped the northern lights for Thor and come away from it feeling richer. He supposed he should tell his brother as much, but knew he wouldn’t. 

Then Thor was reaching for the nightstand. When his fist closed around Loki’s cock it was slick, and every wringing stroke made wet, smacking sounds. 

“Up for being in me?” Thor asked.

“God yes, if you’re game.”

Thor nodded.

Loki took a bracing breath and stiffened his legs against the bed to make a sturdy seat for his brother. After a long, delicious, gliding squeeze, there was Thor where Loki’s cock had been. Another excellent trade. With Thor sitting up and bouncing, the light was better. Loki could see the glint of every drip that fell from Thor’s slit. There was enough room that he could catch Thor’s cock in his fist. He tugged it until Thor’s ass got so tight around him both of them could barely breathe. Then he eased off and Thor went on bouncing, slowly dripping those shiny, sticky beads that Loki loved. 

“You first,” Loki panted, stroking Thor faster, wanting to watch the come pulse out Thor’s cock and onto his chest in time with the contractions in Thor’s ass. 

Thor nodded and made his motions fast and shallow, keeping time with Loki’s hand until he couldn’t match it any longer and all the rhythm ran out of him with a shout. 

Thor watched Loki’s face go wide just before his eyes rolled back in his head. Loki arched, driving sharply up into Thor with a sob, then rocked weakly as his cock pumped a few more times and slackened. 

When he’d caught his breath, Loki leaned up on his elbows to admire the mess Thor had made on his breast. Milky pools of semen streaked him from chin to belly. His flood, as requested: _Ask, and it shall be given you._

Thor cleaned them up until they squeaked, then carried Loki to the other bedroom where they could both sleep in the sprawling poses they preferred without crowding each other.

  
  
  
  


The following Wednesday, they piled into the car to endure a long ride to an undesirable destination. The oaks that lined the older roads had turned a shade of dusty pink the brothers had never seen them wear before. Like the breasts of doves. Environmentally, they couldn’t imagine it was a good sign, but it was a lovely sight and constant distraction that took the edge off a joyless drive.

  
  


Their grandmother, Ann, greeted them at the door with her traditional, “When are you two going to bring some girls home for the holidays?” 

Thor responded with his traditional, “There’s no one else for us, Nana,” punctuated by a hug and kiss.

She misinterpreted herself as being the exception, Loki read it correctly, and Thor managed to take his first step into holiday-hell with the truth intact. 

The rest of the day was spent evading, though Ann evaded much of it herself. She had, from the first, refused to believe that their professed attraction to men was anything but a trendy phase. When necessary, the brothers answered questions with questions, but they largely avoided conversations by running errands, cutting wood, petting cats, and scrubbing dishes. 

Things didn’t truly relax until their grandmother went to bed at ten. Thor had escaped earlier by falling asleep on the couch under his uncle’s enormous tabby cats. Incubated by them, he hadn’t noticed the chill in the house. When he rose, it was after eleven and he could see his breath. Odin had fallen asleep on the sofa. Freyr had gone off to bed. Frigga and Loki were sitting at the breakfast nook, warming their hands on mugs of hot cocoa and leaning across the table so that they could whisper to each other and still be heard.

The thermostat was just outside the kitchen in the front hall. Thor hmphed when he read it, then changed the settings.

Loki looked stricken when Thor caught his eye. Frigga looked as calm as she could manage when sharing a zip code with her mother. 

“Any luck, Lo?” Thor asked, and saw the faint shake of his brother’s head.

“Cold feet,” Loki sighed. His face crumpled, but he swiftly schooled it straight. Thor saw him draw a careful breath and take his time letting it out again. A long gust in through his nose that was released at a pace that took twice as long. Seeking calm in beats of three.

“Speaking of cold,” Thor said, sliding onto the bench beside his brother and wrapping an arm around him, “guess what Nana had the thermostat set to.” 

Frigga groaned. Thor took the last cookie from the plate between them and dipped it into Loki’s mug. Loki opened his mouth wide to demand a bite and got it.

“Fifty-five,” Frigga said. 

“Sixty?” Loki tried, around a mouthful of chocolate chips.

“Loki’s closer, but Mom wins by The Price is Right rules. Fifty-eight.”

“That cheap little shit,” Frigga scoffed. “It’s only twelve degrees warmer in here than it is outside. She can afford to heat this place to a hundred degrees for ten thousand years. And I know she isn’t turning it down because she gives a damn about the planet.”

“What did you change it to?” Loki asked, feeling the warm air pouring out over his stocking feet from the vent below the table.

“Sixty-nine at night.”

“Nice,” Loki and Frigga said in unison, and all three dissolved into giggles.

“Seventy-two by day.”

“Why didn’t we feel the cold sooner?” Loki asked.

“I fed a small forest into the fireplace today,” Thor said.

“Do a fire again tomorrow anyway,” Loki sighed.

“I will. And the turkey will be in the oven. Plus the bread and green beans. Potatoes steaming on the stove. If you stay in the kitchen, you’ll be roasting.”

Loki hummed and sagged against Thor’s side.

“Cold feet, or change of heart?” Thor murmured, rubbing Loki’s arm. 

“The former,” Loki said.

“Do you want me to take a crack at it?” Thor asked, and Loki nodded. “You sure? Cat won’t go back into the bag. If you need more time, take it.”

Loki’s gaze went unfocused while Thor watched. It remained distant for almost a minute.

“I have what I need,” Loki said, willing himself back up to the surface. “And whatever it costs won’t be on my account--or yours.”

“Okay,” Thor nodded.

Frigga cocked her head and squinted a little to see them more clearly through tired eyes.

“We came out of one closet twenty years ago,” Thor began, and Loki huffed a laugh.

“ _‘We,_ ’” Loki repeated. “ _You_ came out of it. I just hopped on your coattails: moi aussi. And here I go again.”

Thor pecked a kiss onto Loki’s temple and smiled. “Ready for another?”

“I am,” Frigga nodded.

“Brace yourself,” Thor warned, with his voice flat and low and mostly breath, devoid of the playful bounce and audible wink that she’d expected. She nodded once. “I love him,” Thor said, tipping his head sideways so that the hollow of his cheek rested on the crown of Loki’s head.

“I know,” Frigga said, smiling wide with shining eyes.

“And when we go upstairs,” Thor went on, “I’ll wedge a chair under the doorknob and we’ll both get in the same twin bed like we always do.”

Loki stared at his mother’s face. She was nodding, still smiling, and still watching Thor, letting Loki observe her undisturbed. 

“I always knew it was the two of you.” She drew a small circle in the air with one finger. “But I didn’t know if you needed to draw a line or two,” she swiped her finger through the circle, “to make it work.”

“The line is between us and the rest of the world,” Loki breathed, and nearly wept with relief when his mother met his eyes and bit her lips in sympathy.

“What about Dad?” Thor asked.

“He knows what I know. _Knew_ ,” she corrected. “Should I fill him in?”

“Do you think it would be a disaster?” Thor whispered.

“No.”

Loki went wide-eyed while Thor only hummed.

“Is that a yes then?” Frigga asked. Thor dipped his head to look at his brother.

“Lo?” 

“Yes,” Loki breathed. 

  
  


Loki slept under Thor’s arm with a leg thrown across Thor’s thighs. He didn’t move at all in the night, which meant Thor didn’t either. 

What music lay in wait for them to face at breakfast, they weren’t certain. Their father was most often inscrutable. It had served him well in the courtroom--and had driven his children to distraction at the dinner table. 

  
  


Family meals had made Loki nervous for years. Everyone was so close together at the table. He and his brother had shared the same bed, soaps, detergents and clothes for half their lives. Their scents were likely indistinguishable. He reminded himself he couldn’t smell his parents from where they were seated, so the same safety probably applied to him. But, like their parents, he and Thor had no anecdotes or tales of travel that didn’t involve each other. No plans for the future from which the other was excluded. No bubble of personal space was observed between them. They finished each other’s sentences and often began them simultaneously. It all left him feeling like a glassfish in a bowl. 

Loki’s focus had been trained on their father all day, expecting to sense Odin’s gaze on the side of his face or the back of his neck, waiting to catch him watching Thor with some sign of concern on his face. When he couldn’t find one, he surmised their mother hadn’t told him yet. 

Loki sat down to dinner awaiting a different kind of doom, muscles tense and posture rigid, braced for the annual, inevitable interrogation. 

“What about Sif?” their grandmother started, once her salad was done.

Thor had been carving the turkey with some focus and it took a moment for the words to register. He looked to his right for Loki’s help, thinking he must have missed something.

“Non sequitur,” Loki confirmed.

“Right,” Thor said softly, with a tired, tiny nod. “She’s doing well. Went to Iceland with Hogun in the spring. Loved it.”

“Oh.” Ann deflated. “I didn’t know they were together.”

“They’re not.”

“Is she seeing anyone else?”

“Nope.”

Ann brightened. “Well then what are you waiting for? She’s a wonderful girl.”

“She’s incredible,” Thor agreed. 

Loki felt his legs begin to tremble. He wondered if their vibrations could be felt through the floor.

“You should bring her here for Christmas.”

Loki saw their mother lean back in her seat and square her jaw. Odin’s hand went to the back of her neck and started kneading.

“Why would I do that, Nana?”

“Well, you’re not getting any younger, sweetheart,” she said, smoothing the tablecloth.

“Likewise, Gram,” Thor said, setting a steaming slice of turkey breast on Frigga’s offered plate. “Maybe you should ask Sif to marry you.”

Loki heard a chorus of snorts around his own and the ringing knock of the base of Ann’s wine glass against the table. 

“Don’t you want to start a family before it’s too late?”

“I have a family,” Thor said, rolling his head in a ring to nod at everyone. “And last time I checked, they started me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Thor agreed.

“Well?” Ann asked, raising her hands to her sides.

“Well,” Thor began, sinking into his seat and spooning potatoes onto his plate, “I think it would be despicable to marry a woman I’m not in love with and use her to have children I don’t want.” 

“Then what _do_ you want?” she shrugged. 

“I have everything I want,” Thor said, and felt Loki’s toes lightly press the tops of his own.

“I just don’t understand you people.”

Thor heard air gust through his brother’s lips and turned toward him so they could mouth “You people” in unison.

“Loki, what about you?”

He knew she was only asking because she’d just seen him mocking her and thought she could embarrass him. “What about me, Nana?”

"Have you seen anyone at all since I saw you last Christmas?"

"By 'anyone,' I assume you mean 'any women,'" Loki said.

Ann didn't wait for an answer, only flattened her lips and focused on her plate.

Odin and Freyr waited a beat, then plunged headlong into their endlessly ongoing conversation about gardening.

Eating always calmed Thor down and he tucked into dinner with something like vengeance. When Loki was this upset, he could only sip cold water. He poked at his food until Thor’s plate was empty, then swapped their dishes to spare himself a night of sickness.  
  


When the meal was over, Thor went out to chop firewood, splitting some of the bigger logs into thin strips for kindling. Loki followed and sat on the cold iron bench by the empty birdbath, looking up at the night sky. 

Low, dense clouds obscured the moon and stars with a ceiling of unbroken grey. Loki had wanted the perspective the depth of space provided. Longed for a reminder that the problem of his grandmother was a little one. That even the entire world was ultimately tiny and, in itself, meaningless. That he was allowed to make his own meaning. That it was fair to say everyone else got it wrong--which was also easily believed, as the evidence most often supported it. To think it was one thing; to see it was to believe it.

The silver haze above was, at least, acting as a blanket, keeping things from freezing. Loki let the damp, sinking chill of the air drive the heat from his cheeks and soothe his flighty, fluttering stomach.

Both brothers stopped to look when the back door slid open and their father stepped out onto the deck. Thor nodded his hello and went back to swinging the ax. Loki watched Odin raise his hands to his lips and saw his face flash orange with the flare of a match. When he lowered his arms, his dark silhouette bore a glowing dot of red below a blue plume of smoke.

Odin sank onto the bench beside Loki and offered the joint.

“From your uncle. For the nausea.”

“Thank you,” Loki said, then took a long drag and sighed it out. “Fuck, he's an angel.”

“He slipped a cigarette case full of them into the pocket of your mother’s sweater if you need more.”

“She probably needs them more than I do,” Loki mused. “Imagine having _that_ for a mother.”

“I know,” Odin laughed. “Apple fell far from the tree, thank heaven. I think more than half of what your mother saw in me was that my parents were so lovely.”

Loki laughed and let his head fall back, remembering fishing boats and birthdays and summer trips to the beach. He and Thor had been nine when their paternal grandparents had died. One after the other, two days distant, unable to live apart. “I’ve always thought they were robbed. They had so much living left to do.”

“They did,” Odin agreed. “I know they weren’t young, but...”

“They felt young.”

“Exactly.”

“How’s Mom?” Thor asked, laying the sack of firewood on the deck and bending to sit on the huge stones that edged the flowerbed.

“She’s,” Odin began, but only air followed. He huffed a laugh and tried again. “You know how it is. You're old enough to hold your own, but she'd still like to fight for you. I think she's always secretly hoped that one of you would pitch Ann through a window."

"I've always gotten that vibe," Thor grinned. "I do feel guilty for disappointing her on that front."

"God, it would be good," Loki groaned. "That's why we can't do it. Nothing else could ever compare."

"Actually, she's playing double solitaire with her brother," Odin said. "He brought a bottle of Casa Dragones, so...”

“So we’ll have to carry them both to bed,” Thor said.

“Probably,” Odin nodded. “She said she’d like to do holidays with just the four of us from now on.”

“Not Freyr?” the boys asked in unison, and Odin ducked his head to hide the smile that always came when they were synced.

“I think she felt you might like the privacy, but, if you’re amenable, I doubt she’d mind. If you could stay a day late or come a day early, though--or both, I think she’d appreciate it. We never get you all to ourselves anymore.”

“Not since that Christmas Thor and I caught the uber-flu. We spent the whole break on the sofa, drowning in eldritch fluids.”

“God, that was the last time, wasn’t it?” Odin remembered. “You were, what, sixteen? It’s been twenty years already.”

“Yep.”

“Just babies,” Odin breathed.

“Fetuses,” Loki agreed.

“The sounds that were coming from your lungs gave your mother and me nightmares for months afterward.” 

  
  


Odin carried the firewood inside so Thor and Loki could stay out. They dawdled until Loki started shivering, which was sooner than they would have liked, but then danced when they learned their grandmother had, after a lot of stomping and loud closing of china cabinets, gone off to bed.

They sagged into sofas and loveseats and sat absorbing the fire’s warmth until their limbs and eyelids grew too heavy to ignore.

  
  


“We smell like _all_ the smoke,” Loki noted, stripping off his skunky clothes and weighing a shower. He wanted to smell like himself again and to have warm feet and loose limbs. He also wanted to collapse into bed without delay.

“Should we wash?” he asked.

“In the morning,” Thor said. “It’ll give us an excuse to avoid Nana while she’s up. We can take forever drying our hair.”

“Good call.”

  
  


Thor’s warmth made up for the lack of scalding. Loki spooned up in front of him and Thor wrapped him in heavy arms and legs. Soon Thor was rubbing Loki’s belly with the same light, slow passes Loki often gave himself when his stomach was feeling off. He had to remind himself to focus on Thor’s hand. Stay in the moment. Otherwise he’d remember that most of the people on the planet would not approve of this. That, to them, the sweetest part of his life was something presumed to be poisonous. His love was some vile cocktail of leprosy, syphilis, and bottom shelf vodka. Something flawed, filthy, and stunted. Ignorant, invalid, and illegal. 

“You’re tense,” Thor said, and kissed the bend of Loki’s jaw.

Loki nodded and focused on his breathing and on releasing clenched muscles until he was jelly in Thor’s embrace. By then Thor was softly kissing the side of his neck and Loki could only marvel that, after twenty years, this still held his brother’s attention as firmly as it always had. 

“Want anything tonight?” Thor asked, with his mouth poised above the curve of Loki’s shoulder.

“This place is boner-kryptonite,” Loki sighed, and Thor nodded and laughed against his skin.

“It is like drinking poison all day,” Thor agreed.

“When we get home we should sixty-nine until we disintegrate.”

“Seconded,” Thor said, and leaned over to kiss Loki goodnight.

  
  
  
  


Morning was still dark and grey. The dim light let them sleep late.

“It’s after nine,” Loki croaked, leaning over to peek at his phone, then collapsing back into bed and being swallowed up by the wave of blankets drawn by Thor’s arm. “Do you think they know that that flu was when it officially started with us?”

They’d been listening to each other’s breasts all through that illness, painfully aware that influenza killed people every year, always had, and always would, and that for two fit young bodies to be brought so low meant they’d caught a particularly bad strain. When the congested gurgling had finally ended, they’d been so relieved they’d started sobbing, then hugged and kissed as fiercely as their wasted limbs had been able. They’d never fully stopped.

“No,” Thor yawned, and then gave Loki a python squeeze to help wake them both up.

“Do you think they’ll ask?”

“Maybe. Though they might think we want privacy from them too.”

“We could always volunteer things,” Loki offered. It sounded like a question.

“Mmhmm,” Thor agreed, and flipped Loki onto his stomach and straddled his ass so that he could put his weight into working the knots out of Loki’s back. The mattress they were on was their uncle’s age, and had never been soft to begin with.

“Is there anything you don’t want me to tell her?” Loki asked, his voice a whisper further muffled by the pillow.

“Nope,” Thor said, moving his hands up to the knot next to Loki’s right shoulder blade, testing and teasing it before carefully smoothing it out. “You can say anything you like.”

Loki lived for long talks with their mother. For years, Thor assumed he’d already told her everything and they were just being discreet. When he’d found out his brother had been keeping such a secret from his favorite confidant, he’d realized that Loki would do anything to keep them safe.

Downstairs, their grandmother was on the good behavior she always dusted off on the last day of a visit, thinking it could gloss over all that had come before, or perhaps realizing she’d driven everyone further away and hoping it wasn’t too late to reel them back in. No one was fooled, but, if nothing else, it was nice to have a few hours free from strain.

  
  
  
  


The light was different as they drove home. The leaves were no longer a dusty pink, but the air was warm and horses were out grazing. The brothers spent the drive calling out _buckskin, bay, palomino,_ and a dozen other descriptors, capped with the direction in which the sight could be seen.

“Are you glad we told Mom?” Thor asked, when the view grew dull with proximity to the city.

“ _‘We,'_ ” Loki laughed, rolling his eyes. “Yes, I’m glad _you_ told Mom. Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Thor smiled, and squeezed Loki’s thigh. “Are you still thinking of a number between sixty-eight and seventy?”

“Always.”

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
